On The Ground In Colorado For Day One Of Legal Weed

While many of us were sleeping off our revelry and a small army of workers shoveled the annual 50 tons of New Year's Rockin' Eve trash from Times Square, thousands braved sub-freezing temps in Colorado to line up outside our nation's first legal marijuana shops.

To say that the inaugural response to lawful reefer has been enthusiastic would be an understatement.

"There was a guy with a lawn chair at 6:30 this morning. The line formed probably fifty deep before we even opened the shop and it hasn't stopped at all," said a bemused Theran Snyder, founder of the appropriately dubbed The Kine Mine in Idaho Springs. "There's an hour-and-ahalf wait, a line out the door, and it's going great."

In Denver, locations such as Citimed reported a queue forming at 4 a.m. and a consistent 3-1/2 hour wait. Up in ski country, Breckenridge Cannabis Club owner Caitlyn McGuire admitted to being shocked with the turnout at their Main Street storefront. The shop had 50-100 people waiting for them to open and had maintained that range into the afternoon.

"I thought that line was going to die down, but it hasn't yet," she said with an exhilarated laugh.

It's not just the locals who are turning out to support their newest agricultural entrepreneurs. Now that a medical card is no longer required for those over 21, marijuana enthusiasts have poured in from all over the country. It's the vanguard of a new form of tourism that is estimated to cause the national pot market to spike 64%, to a staggering $2.34 billion, and opening the doors for a cottage industry of wine-country-esque cannabis connoisseur tour agencies.

"They've been calling for a week. There are people who drove here from Florida," Snyder said. "Our local reporter in town here, he was amazed that someone would come that far just for this."

"Completely new faces," McGuire noted. "Mostly out-of-staters, but we have had a considerable amount of in-staters. More than we expected."

"We've definitely seen out-of-staters," agreed Josh Jaramillo of Denver's Denco. "One of the first guys through the door had a Wisconsin ID."

Allegedly not only citizens are hyped up to get hyphy now that they can burn with impunity. One worker at a retail location told of two police officers cutting the line and surreptitiously being the first customers of the day. (The worker requested anonymity as he doesn't "want to cause any problems for anyone" in an already fraught environment.) It should be noted that policy at every department we reached out to unequivocally forbids their officers or employees from consuming marijuana. The departments say it's a violation of federal law, and law enforcement receives federal funding. We're guessing they were getting it for a friend.

With demand booming, smart proprietors are taking advantage of a cornered market.

"I can't say taxes are included, but basically the breakdown is, after the 31.9% tax, people are walking out of the door Colorado residents at $25 a gram and out-of-state at $35 a gram," said Snyder. "And no one's complaining. People have been very patient, it's an hour and a half wait, and everyone's walking away happy."

When you consider that possession of a quarter ounce of pot, the maximum allowed to a non-resident, could result in six months in jail in Wisconsin or up to a year in Florida, the peace of mind alone may be worth the inflated rates. Oh, and neighboring Utah folks? Just a head's up, even if you just toke while in the safe zone, failing a blood or urine test for THC at any time once home could lead to facing the same charges as if you were drunk driving. And THC can linger in your system for up to a month.

Financial incentives aside, everyone we spoke to agreed that legally providing pot was, if nothing else, a thrilling position to be in. That's even despite the specter of a possible federal intervention and the onus of conducting a multi-million dollar business without being able to have a bank account or accept credit cards.

"Now that we're actually doing it, it feels amazing," gushed McGuire. "It was a lot of long hours that went into getting here, and a lot of those hours I wasn't sure that we would actually make it here. So the fact that we're actually experiencing it right now is a little surreal, but it's really awesome."

"You know, I've got mixed feelings obviously," Jaramillo admitted. "You like the opportunity to be a pioneer in the business and say, 'Hey I was there in the beginning.' But there's also the stress of making sure we comply with all the rules and regulations. They wrote what is, I want to say, a 130-page rule handbook for us to follow, so it's not one of those things where you have marijuana available and you're ready to go."

In a nation where 58% of the population now favors legalizing weed, the enthusiasm directed at Colorado (and soon toward Washington, which expects to open its first legal retail outlets in June) may be the turning point in a fight to end the prohibition that still sees clashes with both the powers-that-be and the potential competition. For all its vaunted evils, a public legally consuming marijuana is nothing to be afraid of. In fact, in Colorado, it's been a completely uneventful day. Nothing scary here.

As you mentally parse what all this means to our future as a society, it's worth noting that even dolphins, everyone's favorite playful and sentient sea creatures, like to cop some pufferfish and get faded now and then.

As one Coloradan we spoke with rather succinctly put it: "Dude we're dealing with stoners. They're pretty mellow people, it's not like we're dealing with a bunch of drunks or Black Friday shit, you know what I mean? Stoners are pretty cool."

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